Unfortunately, whether the issue is agricultural technology or non-scientific “woo” treatments, Dr. Oz puts his training as a surgeon and scientist behind the need to win the daily ratings war.

Oz was once a man who relied on science and the scientific method to gain huge success and respect. But like so many before him, he eschewed scientific principles for the siren song of stardom. According to managing editor of the Science-Based Medicine blog Dr. David Gorski, “It’s hard not to liken this to the proverbial deal with the devil for his very soul.”

Oz has gone from a vice-chair and professor of surgery at Columbia University to an “alternative medicine” shyster.

His denial of the scientific consensus behind GIFs is only the latest in a long line of pseudoscientific views Oz has taken in recent years. It started by promoting Ayurvedic medicine, mystics, and Reiki (the Japanese art of harnessing energy fields). But these are spirituality, not medicine.

Then came the more commercial enterprises: “Miracle” weight loss cures and “revolutionary breakthroughs” in a field whose advances can best be described as plodding. Dr. Oz has claimedmangosteen extract, green coffee beans, and red palm oil, for example, were the answers to a laundry list of ailments despite no reputable scientific studies to back them up. Alternative medicine expert Dr. Edzard Ernst claims, “Dr. Oz’s promotion of this and other unproven or disproven alternative treatments is irresponsible and borders on quackery.”

But the last straw for the respectable scientific community came when Oz shared his bully pulpit, loyally watched by four million Americans, with osteopathic doctor Joseph Mercola and lionized his quackery.

Mercola is a star in the “alternative health” scene and has been criticized by the FDA, the medical watchdog site Quackwatch, and numerous respected doctors. He has made copious wild and dangerous suggestions such as: Vaccines are dangerous, HIV does not cause AIDS, and that cancer is a fungus that can be cured by baking soda injections. (Seriously. No joke.) Oz describes Mercola favorably as “a man your doctor doesn’t want you to know” – an attack to which any science-based M.D. would surely reply, “For good reason!”

And now Oz is going after genetically improved foods. Among a barrage of misinformation, heincorrectly stated that GIFs require more pesticides than conventional crops. Calling for mandatory labeling, he said that opposition may be “a global conspiracy to keep you from knowing if you’re eating genetically modified foods.” He showcased “world expert” on GIFs Scott Faber from the discredited Environmental Working Group, an organization whose sole purpose seems to be to fulfill a monthly quota of unscientific scare campaigns.

What neither Oz nor Faber said was that the scientific community is united in its consensus regarding the safety of GIFs. The premier scientific body in the U.S., the National Academy of Sciences, calls them safe, noting that after billions of meals served, “no adverse health effects attributed to genetic engineering have been documented in the human population.”

It also finds GIFs to be better for the environment, noting that such crops have reduced insecticide use, reduced use of the most dangerous herbicides, increased frequency of conservation tillage and no-till farming, reduced carbon emissions, reduced soil runoffs, and improved soil quality.

And regarding labeling? Opposition to labeling is largely centered on the unintended consequences that come from such unnecessary mandates. For example, vice provost and dean of the University of Arizona College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Dr. Shane Burgess explainsthat the costs of labeling will be transferred to consumers raising their food costs: “The biggest losers of all will be our most vulnerable – those 15.9 million children in the 14.5 percent of U.S. households that battle food insecurity daily.”

Oz’s opposition to GIFs may have carried some weight years ago when he was a respected doctor and scientist. But now, it is just the latest example of junk-science in an alarmist and agenda-driven campaign for Nielsen’s sake.

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The High Plains Daily Leader and Southwest Daily Times are published Sunday through Friday and reaches homes throughout the Liberal, Kansas retail trade zone. The Leader & Times is the official newspaper of Seward County, USD No. 480, USD No. 483 and the cities of Liberal and Kismet. The Leader & Times is a member of the Liberal Chamber of Commerce, the Kansas Press Association, the National Newspaper Association and the Associated Press.

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